Asee peer logo

A Nuclear Power Industry Career Development Workshop for High School Teachers in a Hispanic Serving Institution

Download Paper |

Conference

2011 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Location

Vancouver, BC

Publication Date

June 26, 2011

Start Date

June 26, 2011

End Date

June 29, 2011

ISSN

2153-5965

Conference Session

Curricular Developments in Energy Education I

Tagged Division

Energy Conversion and Conservation

Page Count

13

Page Numbers

22.80.1 - 22.80.13

DOI

10.18260/1-2--17362

Permanent URL

https://peer.asee.org/17362

Download Count

529

Paper Authors

biography

Hayrettin B. Karayaka Texas A&M University, Corpus Christi

visit author page

Bora Karayaka is a Mechanical Engineering and Engineering Technology faculty, and the power and energy leader in the program. With his over ten years of industry experience, he has extensive experience in project management, and a clear understanding of deadlines, industry requirements, safety and reliability issues, and other aspects in the power and energy fields. He is responsible for teaching the energy and power courses in the department.

Dr. Karayaka’s research interests include power generation and renewable energies. He received his B.S. and M.S. degrees from Istanbul Technical University in Control and Computer Engineering and his Ph.D. degree in Electrical Engineering from The Ohio State University.

visit author page

biography

Mehrube Mehrubeoglu Texas A&M University, Corpus Christi

visit author page

Dr. Mehrubeoglu received her B.S. degree in Electrical Engineering from the University of Texas at Austin, and her M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in Bioengineering and Electrical Engineering, respectively, from Texas A&M University. After working as a research engineer and software engineer at Electroscientific Industries, where she developed new algorithms for machine vision problems, she joined Cyprus International University as the Chair of Department of Computer Engineering. After returning to Texas she taught at Texas A&M University, Kingsville. She has been with Texas A&M University, Corpus Christi since fall of 2005, and assumed Program Coordinator responsibilities in spring of 2010. Dr. Mehrubeoglu's areas of research include machine vision, imaging and image processing, optical property measurements and instrumentation, applications in biomedical engineering, and effective teaching pedagogies.

visit author page

author page

Faruk Yildiz Sam Houston State University

biography

Korinne Caruso Texas A&M University, Corpus Christi

visit author page

Korinne Caruso is the Engineering Education Program Coordinator for Texas A&M University, Corpus Christi. She completed her Bachelor of Science in Control Systems Engineering Technology in 2002 and a Master of Science in Elementary Education in 2005, after which she received her Mathematics Certification for Grades 4-12. Mrs. Caruso was a researcher in the areas of Engineering and Computing Sciences and has presented her research at several conferences and has published her work in refereed journals. Mrs. Caruso was a classroom teacher of grades 7-12 for five years and is currently working to complete a Master of Science in Computer Science.

visit author page

Download Paper |

Abstract

A Nuclear Power Industry Career Development Workshop for High School Teachers in a Hispanic Serving InstitutionFor several years it has been projected that the current nuclear industry will soon be facing amanpower crisis due to attrition within its “soon-to-be-retiring” workforce. Furthermore, it hasbecome clear that national security issues demand an expanded, not a contracted, nuclear powerindustry. Estimates for the number of nuclear industry workers that will be needed in the nearfuture have shown that we must recruit many more individuals than we have recruited in recentyears, and that imperative, in turn, demands that a concerted effort must be placed on recruitingindividuals from non-traditional sources. Our university is designated as Hispanic ServingInstitution (HSI). Such students have historically not entered careers in nuclear power and are,therefore, exactly the students we should be targeting today. Consequently, several years ago ouruniversity entered into a partnership with Nuclear Power Institute (NPI) to attract traditionallyunderrepresented students into careers in nuclear power and science.To that end, a summer workshop funded through NPI was designed and implemented to train,prepare for research, and educate local area high school teachers for the careers in engineering,engineering technology and the nuclear power industry. First, an outreach effort to local areapublic, private high and junior high schools were organized to advertise and promote theworkshop. After a considerable effort of visits and networking, a total of twenty teachers with avariety of science, math and technology specialties participated in this week-long program heldin July of 2010.During the workshop, a simple, portable curriculum, which can also be used by teachers in theirinstitutions, was given to attract both teachers and students in the fundamental areas of ElectricalEngineering Technology that is applicable to Nuclear Power Systems. The curriculum includedboth lecture and lab sessions which are suitable for beginners in Electric and Digital Systems.Additionally, field trips to a nearby nuclear power plant and an oil refining facilities wereorganized to introduce teachers to the industry. Throughout the trip, the teachers had a greatopportunity to explore multiple segments of the energy world and interact with various industryrepresentatives and leadership. The trip was a very informative, educational and rewardingexperience for the attendees, university presenters and the program’s industry partners.Finally, a survey was conducted to evaluate the overall workshop and the staff/facultyperformance as well as the sustainability of the established curriculum. The great majority of thefeedback received from the teachers indicated the success of this program. This paper describesthis summer program in detail and presents its assessment results.

Karayaka, H. B., & Mehrubeoglu, M., & Yildiz, F., & Caruso, K. (2011, June), A Nuclear Power Industry Career Development Workshop for High School Teachers in a Hispanic Serving Institution Paper presented at 2011 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition, Vancouver, BC. 10.18260/1-2--17362

ASEE holds the copyright on this document. It may be read by the public free of charge. Authors may archive their work on personal websites or in institutional repositories with the following citation: © 2011 American Society for Engineering Education. Other scholars may excerpt or quote from these materials with the same citation. When excerpting or quoting from Conference Proceedings, authors should, in addition to noting the ASEE copyright, list all the original authors and their institutions and name the host city of the conference. - Last updated April 1, 2015